help! i'm exhausted

[smileygirl]

Please someone tell me it's going to get better and tell me when it will be.  I'm so exhausted from waking up at 3 or 4am in the morning with my 10 week lo.  I realize it's too soon to see results but I need some reassurance or something.  I finally did his dream feed at 10:30pm instead of the midnight and today he woke up at around 3:45am and I am so exhausted.  I could barely stay awake.  I tried the sh/pt but I think he was hungry so I fed him and now he's awake.  I know each baby is different and it takes time but I just so wish he'd sleep longer so that way I have the energy to take care of him or else right now and for a while now I've been running on about 4 hours a sleep a day and I know this can't be healthy for me at all.

[MoonMom]

I feel your pain... ubfortunately I don't know the answer!  I would LOVE life if my baby only woke once a night at 3am.  She wakes every 1.5 hours and she's 6 months old.  I hope someone has some answers for you!! (and me)

[Bryony]

Cyn44smile - Is he hungry when he wakes, or do you think it's another issue?  At 10 weeks, he may well be hungry and need that feed - my LO certainly needed a night feed as well as a dream feed for some time yet - 10 weeks is still very young  
 
Can you post your daytime routine so that we can see if anyone has any other ideas? 

In terms of surviival for you - can you go to bed earlier?  When Katie was that age I used to go to bed around 8 or 9pm, set my alarm for 10:30pm for the dream feed, get up and feed her and then go back to sleep, so that I got 2hrs sleep before the dream feed, and about 4-5 hrs sleep afterwards, which was enough to survive on even if I couldn't get back to sleep after the 4am feed (usually I couldn't  )  Can you nap during his daytime naps?  I could never get to sleep during the day, but I know some people can.   Can you get your partner or a friend to look after him for a few hours during the day so that you can get some rest?  It is really hard in those first few months - but you need to try and find a way that you can look after yourself too

Bryony

[skatty]

When my DD was very young I used to express milk for the late evening feed and my DH would give it to her so I could go to bed early and get a good 6 hours sleep before the feed in the early hours, could this work for you?

Also I just want to say yes it will get better and could be very soon, in fact in a few weeks this might be an old problem 

[momofclaire]

I just wanted to send some hugs.  Hang in there because it does get better.

[kim&savannah]

More hugs.  And like others have mentioned, I'd honestly be pretty happy for just one night waking, and my "baby" just turned one! 

We still have multiple nwings each night and our 3 year old does some nights as well.  But to give you hope, neither one of them was doing as well as your LO at 10 weeks, so yours is probably on the way to sleeping brilliantly   And a lot of them still need to eat once or twice a night for the first few months at least so hang in there, grab sleep whenever you can and try to just sort things out one piece at a time.  I know the short naps can be killer--my dd was the same way, but she did eventually outgrow that as well.

~Kim